


Laundry Day

by Sholio



Category: Dark Matter (TV)
Genre: Clothing, F/M, Laundry, Shipboard life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-07
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2019-03-01 13:56:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13296306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: Clothes-sharing for the win. Hey, it's a small ship.





	Laundry Day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MercyBuckets](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercyBuckets/gifts).



It wasn't his imagination, Three thought: he definitely kept coming out of the Raza's tiny laundry facility with fewer clothes than he'd gone in with.

Like everything else on the ship, the laundry machines (tucked into an alcove near the engines) were old, beat to hell, and held together with bargain-basement parts and the android's TLC, so it wasn't unreasonable that some of his clothes might be actually getting chewed to bits in there. Besides, it wasn't like he kept close track of his socks, anyway. 

But there was no way he could fail to notice Five turning up to breakfast one morning in a worn gray T-shirt that he was 100% sure he'd last seen in his own laundry drawer.

"Hey," he said, stabbing a spoon at her. "That's mine."

"It's soft and comfortable," she retorted, popping the top off a container of premade porridge and pulling the tab to heat it.

"Yeah, I know. I know because it's mine. ... Are you putting _coffee_ in your cereal?!"

"It's more efficient than having them separately. Anyway," Five said, stirring, "I consider it my payment after I had to fix the laundry machines twice because _someone_ left bullets in his pockets."

"Could have been anybody."

"No. No, it was definitely you."

 

*

 

So, fine, he wrote the T-shirt off as a loss, but it was the start of Three beginning to notice just how much clothes-sharing went on around this ship.

Nyx had been wearing Five's hand-me-downs ever since she came on the ship, but he was pretty sure the jacket she'd been wearing lately had definitely been Two's at some point. And he didn't know if those boots Two was wearing had started out as hers or Four's, but he'd definitely seen both of them wearing them.

This crew was getting too close for comfort, he thought, dumping an armload of laundry onto his bed. Huh, that one small scrap of black fabric didn't look quite right ... He tugged it out and discovered that he'd accidentally picked up one of Two's crop-tops. Well, it wasn't like it was his fault; careless people were always leaving their clothes laying around in there. (He'd been doing important things the last two days and hadn't had _time_ to go pick up his laundry; it had nothing to do with forgetting that he'd put it in the machine until he ran out of socks.)

The idea of wearing Two's shirt crossed his mind, reluctantly dismissed because it would look absolutely ridiculous, so instead he went off to her quarters to return it like a _good shipmate_ instead of the clothes-stealing vandals that he was cursed to share the Raza with.

Two opened the door wearing the same soft gray T-shirt he'd last seen on Five.

"Oh for fuck's sake," Three said before he could help himself.

Two raised her eyebrows in that eloquent way she had, and stared at him.

"That's my shirt," Three elaborated.

"It's comfortable for sleeping in."

"Yes, I know, that's why Five stole it in the first place."

Now her eyes were laughing at him. "And isn't that one of mine?" She hooked it out of his fingers.

"Yes, which I'm _returning._ " He followed her inside.

"Do you want this back?"

"... yes?" He had a feeling he was walking into a trap, a trap whose nature he sensed a split second before Two raised her arms and stripped it off over her head.

She wasn't wearing anything under it.

"Okay," he said faintly, taking the shirt from her hand, still warm from her body heat. She smiled at him, eyes and mouth both suffused with amused warmth, and did a quick reverse maneuver of what she'd just done, pulling the black shirt over her head. Oddly enough, its tight contours did nothing to make him forget that she had nothing on under _that,_ either.

And then he thought, two can play. "Okay," he said, stripping out of the blue T-shirt he was wearing, letting it fall to the floor, and pulling the gray one over his head. It was still lightly warm, and as it went over his head, it smelled like Two -- not a perfume smell, but the soft musk of her skin.

"See?" she said as his head emerged from the shirt. Her eyes were laughing at him, but not in a mean way; the warm humor invited him to partake of it too. "It's soft."

"I knew that already; it's mine."

"How about this one?" And she snatched the blue T-shirt before he could stop her. Damn those nanite-augmented reflexes.

"Hey!"

Staring him straight in the eyes, smiling, Two pulled it over her head and tugged on the hem to straight it out. "This one's comfortable too."

"I like comfortable T-shirts," he said, his mouth dry. How did she manage to make putting clothes _on_ so compelling?

"I'll keep that in mind."

"Glad you like it." Great, there was no way he'd ever have any clothes left at all now. "Are we done here?"

"I don't know, are we?"

"I ... don't know." 

Her eyes were an invitation. Three reached behind him and tapped the button to close the door. She didn't stop him.

"Look, I know you and Nyx are sleeping together," he began. It was a small ship; hard not to notice things like that.

"So are Nyx and Four."

"Really?" Okay, so maybe there were a few things he didn't know. Four was good at keeping his private life private. "How about you and Four?"

"Not yet." She smiled briefly. "Not that I'd say no if he asked."

"Okay, so we're a lot of people with a lot of time on our hands. Are we ..." He waved a hand between them, and he wasn't sure what he was asking, or what was making him balk; he _wanted_ this, and they'd done it before with no strings attached, but ...

But he wasn't sure if he could do it with no strings attached, now.

But he'd also never (at least in the short span of his memories) been anything less than willing to risk himself for a good cause (or for a quick buck, for that matter), so when she stepped forward, he moved into her space. Her arms circled his waist, and he remembered that so well, the light pressure of them, the hidden strength. (Though he hadn't known, then, just how strong she was.)

"Mmmm." She looked up at him, smiling, and taking his breath away. "It _is_ soft."

"I'll show you soft," he murmured, and dipped his head to let her take his mouth with hers.


End file.
